Richard J. Bernstein (1932-2022) is a renowned philosopher who is interested in the origins of values. Bernstein’s 1986 book Philosophical Profiles, which was published at a time when postmodernism and deconstruction were at their peak, was a comparative review of the work of several philosophers, including Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martin Heidegger. Bernstein’s goal was to explore the similarities and differences between these thinkers from a pragmatic American perspective. Bernstein lamented the decline in pragmatic interest in the United States.
Richard J. Bernstein was a Vera List Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He has written extensively on a variety of topics in philosophy, including ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of language. Moreover, he has written distinguished works especially on the philosophy of pragmatism and its implications for American society.
He is one of the new age philosophers who has written and taught on a range of topics, including social and political philosophy, critical theory, and Anglo-American philosophy. He has edited and published many books, including Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis (1983) and, most recently, Ironic Life (2016) and Pragmatic Encounters (2015).
In 2003, MIT Press published a volume of essays examining Bernstein’s work and he has been a key figure in the graduate faculty at The New School for Social Research, where he has taught since 1989 and served as chair of the Philosophy Department and dean. He has been widely recognized for his exceptional teaching skills, including a 1999 New School Distinguished Teacher’s Award. He has a PhD from Yale University, which he received in 1958.
All his works have contributed significantly to modern philosophy as he served all his life to research and teaching of the subject, until his recent death in July 2022.
